Work experience placements play a vital role in helping individuals make the right career choices. They also ensure that those offered places on archive/record/information management courses are aware of the nature of the work they are entering into (and hopefully gives them a realistic idea of the prospects for employment). Masters applicants in many other fields are likely to have none of these advantages, and many graduates embarking on non-vocational masters courses have little understanding of their future job prospects. The fact that the archive (records management, etc.) profession insists on pre-course experience is precisely what helps make their masters graduates such professionals.
Any organisations which offer voluntary work placements know that managing these can be quite a burden, and if cvs and covering letters are requested, it is usually so that the tasks devised can be closely matched to the skills (or gap in skills) of the applicant.
I agree with Kelda that voluntary opportunities need to be sufficiently flexible to allow individuals to earn a living. Distance learning courses also play an important role in opening up the profession to those who need to earn while they learn.
Pre-course work experience does not undervalue the profession so long as it provides the individual, the organisation and the university courses with what they need. Everyone involved needs to ensure that exploitation does not occur and that the experience is mutually beneficial.
In the East Midlands we have set up some web pages in our region's section of the ARA website, which are intended to give prospective students an overview of the type of placements they might find in the region, and to help put them in touch with those with experience in the sector. Hopefully this will go some way towards managing expectations for all involved.
Sarah Colborne
New Members Representative
ARA East Midlands
Begin forwarded message:
As a recent graduate of an archives and records mangement course I would suggest that even today it is possible to acquire good work experience and improve your employability without undertaking exploitative 'internships'. Many repositories have strong volunteer and work experience programmes that allow you to volunteer one day, or even half a day, per week; allowing graduates of archive/records management courses or potential graduates (or even well-intentioned do-gooders) to improve employability while also working.Perhaps instead of offering one person a full-time unpaid 'internship', five people could be offered one day a week. Or shorter one-two week blocks could be arranged over the 3 month period. These options wouldn't solve the problem of too many graduates, or even guarantee interns finding paid work, but would avoid outright exploitation.Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website athttps://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra